'
I turned the cross round: the front of it was now next to my skin.
Sharp as needles were those diamond and ruby points as I sat and
gazed in the glass. Slowly a sensation arose on my breast, of pain
that was a pleasure wild and new. _I was feeling the facet_. But the
tears trickling down, salt, through my moustache tears of laughter;
for Sinfi Lovell seemed again murmuring, 'For good or for ill, you
must dig deep to bury your daddy.'
What thoughts and what sensations were mine as I sat there, pressing
the sharp stones into my breast, thinking of her to whom the sacred
symbol had come, not as a blessing, but as a curse--what agonies were
mine as I sat there sobbing the one word 'Winnie,'--could be
understood by myself alone, the latest blossom of the passionate
blood that for generations had brought bliss and bale to the Aylwins.
* * * * *
I cannot tell what I felt and thought, but only what I did. And while
I did it my reason was all the time scoffing at my heart (for whose
imperious behoof the wild, mad things I am about to record were
done)--scoffing, as an Asiatic malefactor will sometimes scoff at the
executioner whose pitiless and conquering saw is severing his
bleeding body in twain.
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